Conveners
Future Missions for High Energy Astrophysics: Block 1
- Filippo Frontera (University of Ferrara and INAF-OAS Bologna)
- Shaolin Xiong ()
Description
The session will be devoted to overview open issues in high energy astrophysics and the ongoing experimental activities to settle them. Thus, in addition to the open issues, the session will deal with an overview of the X-/gamma-ray instruments or mission concepts now under study, submitted or intended to be submitted to national or international space agencies, missions already approved or on the way for their evaluation by national or international space agencies.
At last, in few months, the window of Astronomical X-ray polarimetry will be re-opened after more than 40 years. IXPE the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, is the next NASA Small Explorer Mission with a decisive contribution of Italy. Three X-ray mirrors focalize the radiation into three detector units that host the polarization sensitive detectors entirely devised, built, tested and...
Despite over 50 years of Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) observations many open questions remain about their nature and the environments in which the emission takes place. Polarization measurements of the GRB prompt emission have long been theorized to be able to answer most of these questions. The POLAR detector was a dedicated GRB polarimeter developed by a Swiss, Chinese and Polish collaboration. The...
Modern astronomy has entered the multi-wavelength and multi-messenger era, and time-domain astronomy is one of the leading frontiers. Around 2030, a series of all-sky monitors and survey missions will discovery more than tens of thousands of transients every day. However, the existing and planned telescopes can not simultaneously perform follow-up observations for so many transients of...
E. Virgilli, F. Frontera, P. Rosati, E. Caroli, L. Ferro, M. Moita, C. Labanti, R. Campana, F. Fuschino on behalf of a large collaboration
Gamma-ray astronomy is a branch whose potential has not yet been fully exploited. The observations of elemental and isotopic abundances in supernova (SN) explosions are key probes not only of the stellar structure and evolution but also for understanding...
The polarization measurement of the high-energy photons from cosmic sources is today recognised as a key goal for understanding the emission mechanisms and the geometry of the active regions involved, and therefore to solve still open hot scientific issues. To achieve this challenging objective, a mandatory requirement for new instrumentation in this energy regime will be to provide high...
Hard X-/soft Gamma-ray astronomy is a key field for the study of important astrophysical phenomena such as the electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational waves, gamma-ray bursts, black holes physics and many more. However, the spatial localization, imaging capabilities and sensitivity of the measurements are strongly limited for the energy range >70 keV due to the lack of focusing...
The Transient High-Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor (THESEUS) mission concept aims at fully exploiting Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) for early Universe and multi-messenger astrophysics, as well as providing a substantial advance in time-domain astronomy through detection, accurate location, multi-wavelength (0.3 keV – 10 MeV plus near IR) characterization, and redshift measurement, of many...
Aim to the MeV window of gamma-ray astronomy and the next generation of gamma-ray telescope, a prototype gamma-ray imaging detector—MeVCube funded by NSFC and DFG will be developed to demonstrates that even a tiny detector can reach the sensitivity of last generations large -scale instruments. I will present the preliminary design of MeVCube and the prospective performance yielded by...
